[Tagging] Proposed feature : World wide place=* standardisation only based on population

[Simone Saviolo]

2010/5/27 Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com>:
> Consider the highway=* tag, which has come to refer to "the importance
> of the highway for the road grid". Compare this to Simone's suggestion
> that the place=* tag should refer to "an idea about the urban texture
> of the country". Very similar ideas. If Simone's suggestion is the
> consensus, perhaps it is worth trying to clarify this further.

As I said, my comment was related to a recent discussion on talk-it.
Places were re-tagged, downgrading cities to towns if they had less
than 100.000 abitants AND they were not the capital of a region (in
the administrative sense of Regione). The result was that many a place
we'd expect to see on the map was not there. After a while, places
were re-tagged again, setting the bar to 50.000 abitants for province
capitals. Still, there was discussion about whether we should change
(lower) the population thresholds. In the end, there are many factors
to consider (historical, economical, urbanistic matters), and it's
hard to summarize them all in a population range - especially in
Italy, where cities with a few tenths of thousands inhabitants may
have been the capital of an influential duchy or state. This is
nothing knew, and probably is the same thing that has been repeated
lots of times well before I was even here.

Many criteria were proposed, including the usual one involving the
legal definition of "città" (which has been rejected, as it would make
cities out of very small centres). In the end, many of us agreed on
the "urban texture of the country" concept. Let me report what was
said - I admit I had no previous knowledge on this subject, so sorry
if I am imprecise. We noted that France or Austria revolve around a
very large centre, i.e., Paris, or Wien, with a few more large cities
and the rest of the country consisting of small, non-influential
centres. On the other hand, Germany or Italy are "multi-centric",
consisting of many large centres surrounded by less influential
centres surrounded by minor centres. In other words, the pyramidal
structure of the centres, based on their importance, has a very acute
vertex in France, while it's more "spread-out" in Italy. As a
consequence, while it is good to see the map of France showing five
cities, Italy's map should instead contain a few tenths. Of course,
this cannot be achieved if we only look at population - especially if
we want to use a world-wide population criterion.

I hope the idea is clear.

Regards,

Simone